“Probably not what you think, but it’s none of your concern. I’ve been patient enough with you and I—”
“Show me the trust documents, then. You won’t even have to talk to me this time. Just show me those documents and I’ll be on my way.”
“You won’t see me if you come here. I’ll send for Cecil. It’s his baby now. I’m done with your questions, Mr. Novak. If you come here, you’ll need to deal with Cecil.”
“This is why he’s worth keeping on for a decade, Danielle? To keep trespassers away from the cave and questions away from your family?”
The line went dead.
Mark didn’t call back. Just kept driving. Snow was falling again. The conditions and his speed would have bothered him when he arrived in Indiana but they felt familiar now. Muscle memory. Sometimes the things you thought you’d left behind circled back for you.
53
The door was in sight and the keys were in hand but still the surface world wouldn’t grant Ridley access without resistance. He and Julianne were no more than fifty feet from the entrance when the security floodlights went on.
The footbridge and the gate were instantly illuminated, and the light spread out almost far enough to reveal Ridley and Julianne. They were in the farthest reaches of the shadows. He stopped walking and grabbed Julianne’s arm to bring her to a halt. The lights had come on without warning, as if tripped by a motion sensor, but he knew that the lights here didn’t operate on motion sensors. Someone had turned them on, which meant someone had seen them.
There was the sound of a door opening and closing — not just closing, slamming — up at the big house just above them, and then a flashlight beam appeared.
Ridley pushed Julianne farther from the light. This required leaving the creek bank and moving out onto the ice itself. They’d made it three steps when there was a single loud crack followed by an uneasy yawning sound all around them as the stressed ice fought to hold. Ridley stopped moving. If the ice broke beneath them, it would draw that flashlight beam their way, and then he would have to act fast.
Water bubbled up beside Julianne’s foot but the crack didn’t spread. The ice sheet creaked and strained but it held. Ridley kept his eyes on the house, and a few seconds later the source of the flashlight appeared: Danielle MacAlister, walking with hostile purpose, walking toward them. Ridley’s jaw clenched as he reached for his knife. He did not want Danielle to be part of this but he could not allow her to disrupt him either. He simply couldn’t.
He had put the knife to Julianne’s throat and was ready to push her into the light, ready to show Danielle the consequences that awaited, when Danielle turned away from the creek without breaking stride.
She wasn’t coming to the cave. Wasn’t coming to confront them. She was following the driveway.
When it was obvious that she wasn’t approaching them, Julianne did a strange thing. Despite the knife at her throat, she leaned her head against Ridley’s shoulder. A gesture of relief, which made some sense, but almost intimate as well, and even more fascinating, the relief didn’t seem to be entirely on her own behalf. She seemed relieved for him as well.
Maybe you are wrong about her.
No. She had a knife at her throat, that was all. Of course she did not want him to be forced to use it. Her relief was only a product of self-preservation.
Still, he felt a connection to the touch that suggested they were in this together. Did she understand now? She was an intuitive woman. Did she realize that he’d told her only the truth, always?
Ridley looked at her face and then back up at Danielle MacAlister, who was walking away from them, toward either Cecil’s apartment or the front gate. If she was headed to Cecil’s, that meant he was about to be freed and the police called. Trapdoor would be a scene of chaos soon, and that couldn’t be allowed. All Ridley needed was time. They wouldn’t understand that, though. Never had.
“I need to stop her,” he whispered. “I have to.”
Julianne lifted her head from his shoulder, twisted to face him, and shook her head. Slowly and emphatically. Then she tilted her head pointedly to the right. Toward the cave. He followed the gesture with his eyes, saw the door, so close to them now. When he looked back at her, she flicked her eyes down at the keys in his hand, then back up to him. Held the stare.
She was right, he realized. There was no need to intervene with Danielle MacAlister. Not when they were this close and he had the keys. Let Danielle call the police, let them come for him. Once he was inside the cave, they wouldn’t catch him. Once he was inside, he could stay as long as he wanted, as long as he needed.
“Yes,” he said. “We’ll go ahead. That’s all that needs to be done.”
Julianne nodded. He felt his trust for her returning despite his better judgment.
“Step carefully,” he said. “We need to stay in the shadows.”
Staying in the shadows required walking under the footbridge instead of across it, and that meant they’d have to cover the rest of the distance over the ice, which had cracked once already. The creaking and groaning sounds were all around them, but Ridley preferred that risk to climbing back onto the creek bank and standing exposed in the floodlights.
They moved slowly across the slick surface. Once, there was a sharp crack like a gunshot, and Ridley braced himself for the fall. The crack had come from a tree branch, though, not the ice. The weak limb snapped and its load of snow fell to the earth with a sound like the release of a held breath. He nudged Julianne forward again. They passed beneath the bridge and then made it up onto the rocks. He looked back up the drive and could no longer see Danielle’s flashlight. It didn’t matter. He just needed to get inside.
Cecil had better have told the truth about the keys. If he lied about that and I do not have the right keys, then God help them all. I’ve come too far to be lied to.
The first key he tried fit the lock. He exhaled and turned the key and heard the bolts slide back. When he pulled the door open, it scraped on the stone and sounded terribly loud, but he didn’t allow himself to look back, just shoved Julianne through. He saw no way to lock the door from the inside and he didn’t have the time to waste, so he left it standing ajar. He walked Julianne ten steps inside the cave and then he paused and took a deep breath.
“All right,” he said. “It should go easier from here. She will understand why we’ve come. I’m sure of that.”
Almost as if in response, a gunshot thundered from somewhere outside the cave. Julianne went rigid and Ridley spun and stared back at the entrance. He saw nothing but snow and ice.
Cecil is free, and Cecil is shooting. I could have killed him. Should have killed him. She stopped me.
Julianne’s hand found his. Squeezed. He looked at her fingers as if he weren’t sure what they were. She tugged him forward, tilting her head again, indicating the black depths that lay before them.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, we will just leave them behind. We will leave them all behind.”
She nodded and tugged again. This was wrong — he was supposed to be the guide, not her. But he also knew she was right. There was no reason to retreat to the surface. Not now. He walked ahead, moving quickly and without light because he did not need it here. This was the old tour route, the ground carefully scraped free of any obstacle, any potential lawsuit. Pershing had shown no respect for the cave in the way he had cleared the tour route.
They went far enough that the entrance disappeared from view and total darkness descended and then he stopped and drank in the wonderful smell of the place — stone and water and power. Traces of blood, yes. But the power was there.